Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making

Presenting rich, textured ethnographic studies of craftspeople at work around the world, Craftwork as Problem Solving examines the intelligent practices involved in solving a variety of problems and the ways in which these are perceived and evaluated both by makers and creators themselves, and by the societies in which they work. With attention to local factors such as training regimes and formal education, access to tools, socialisation and cultural understanding, budgetary constraints and market demands, changing technologies and materials, and political and economic regimes, this book sheds fresh light on the multifarious forms of intelligence involved in design and making, inventing and manufacturing, and cultivating and producing.

About the author (2016)

Trevor H.J. Marchand is Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. He is the author of The Masons of Djenné and Minaret Building and Apprenticeship in Yemen, editor of Making Knowledge and co-editor of the Handbook of Social Anthropology.